#vergina

#vergina

They were all adult males between 40 and 60 years old when they died, ranging in height from 1.62 to 1.82 meters (5'4-6). They were in good overall health with excellent teeth, but osteoarthritis in the bones, particularly in the legs, attests to them having consistently experienced strenuous physical activity in their lives.

The excavation ultimately unearthed 34 burials, 15 of them belonging to children between two and ten years old when they died. The graves are clustered in groups, probably reflecting family nuclei. Most the grave types are earthen pits covered with roof tiles angled against each other.

Both of the cyst graves feature funerary markers reused as building material. One of them contains the partially preserved tombstone of Legio I Italica centurion Gaius Valerius Verecundus was engraved with a wreath of which only traces remain and an inscription that describes him as having been heavily pressed by fate.

Adjacent to the masonry house is a burial ground in use from the 4th century through the first half of the 6th century. Approximately 60 individual inhumation burials have been unearthed, arranged in rows that are increasingly dense with graves as they approach the dwelling. The deceased were buried in cysts formed by reused tegulae (large clay roof tiles) or by rubble walls that supported wooden planks. They were placed in the graves in supine position facing west, north or south.

An monumental early Republican-era funerary complex has been discovered in a suburb of Rome. The excavation of the Via di Pietralata east of Rome also uncovered a stretch of an ancient road, a small cult building and two monumental basins dating back to the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. Remains from this early in the Republican era are scarce in the Eternal City, which make these finds very archaeologically significant.